Thursday, January 18, 2007

The Presumed Politics of Poets

Some people argue that a preference for particular aesthetic forms implies a preference for a particular politics. For a complete dismantling of one such argument, see this post by Robert Archambeu. He defends Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg against the accusation that their poetry is — not "elitist" but "fascist."

I am on record as a fan of Hill's work; a line from his "Improvisations for Hart Crane" (quoted in the post I just provided a link to) nicely captures how what I like works for me: "Thou canst grasp nothing except through appetite." Appetite (or pleasure), that is, is the first step in grasping (or understanding) poems—not just "difficult" poems, but any poems (Reginald Shepherd made some insightful remarks along these lines, and on pleasure and judgment, too).

As for Anne Carson, I am also on record as a fan of her Autobiography of Red, one of the best of the verse novels I have read (the most recent of my posts on this subject is on Rosellen Brown, but I will have more to say about it at some point, maybe when the semester is over). When Carson goes into storytelling mode, as in AoR or the extraordinary "Glass Essay" from Glass, Irony, and God, all her supposed "difficulty" disappears, because I find myself drawn into the work "before" the question of difficulty ever arises, as it were.

The points discussed in the blog suggested that anyone can call anyone "a fascist" -- that the term, as being used by Silliman and others, was now devoid of any historical or political meaning and was wholly metaphorical. An "aesthetic fascist," as in "an emotional terrorist," bad uses of the language to begin with. What I like about the blog is that it holds poets (who are supposed to care about not using words inexactly) accountable for sloppy thinking and wording. But it seems that, by holding such poets accountable, Archambeau could also also be called "a fascist" by such people because he's insisting that words should have meaning rather than being badges or slurs in a war of who we like and who we don't.

Your last point, Don, touches nicely on the paradox of those whose poetry challenges the authoritarian dominion of meaning: their prose statements about what they are doing depend on their being able to mean what they say!